My new routine??

So last week I got out to shoot on Monday morning only to find myself uninspired by landscapes and very draw to wildlife photography. So who would have thougth the same thing could happen again one week later? Not me, but that's exactly what happened. I left the house at 7am yesterday, ready for what looked to be a hopefull sunrise. The coulds were clearing East of town so that's where I planned to head, until my plans were dashed by an accident which closed the road for a few hours. So instead I headed to Maligne Lake again to see if I could catch a nice sunrise with the new snow on the mountains. It has been close to -18 degrees celcius here the past few nights, so there has been a fair but of snow falling up high. As I got closer to the lake the clouds set in and I didn't get a sunrise at all. I took a few shots of the boat house which is now closed, then decided to walk a little up the lake to try and find something cool, which wasn't too hard, within minutes I almost literally ran into three Moose!! I was playing with my camera and walking and looked up too see this moose staring at me from about 100ft away!! AWESOME!!


I shot with these guys for about 45 minutes then went down the road and shot a few frames of the fresh snow on Medicine Lake. Like I said last time, my wildlife photography needs work, but it's definitely something I want to work on for the future. I find I'm like a tourist again, driving around waiting on the side of the road for Elk, Bighorn Sheep and other animals...funny how that happens.


The moose photos were pretty simple, I usually keep my camera in Aperture Priority, and let it choose the shutter. Due to the low light I was shooting almost wide open on the 70-200 here, around f/4.0 I think. The landscape was really easy, three frame HDR to get all the detail in the trees and add a bit more contrast that usual. Shot this one at f/22 to get maximum DOF, shot bracketed frames at -2/0/+2 EV. I did the same shot in a single frame with a Graduated Neutral Density filter and I'm undecided which one I like more. Maybe in the next few days I'll post both so people can see the differences between the two shots and you can decide which you like more. More to come later....

Photos: Nikon D90, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 (moose), 17-55 f/2.8 (lake)

Busy busy busy...

I've been a little busy as of late. I've been getting out to shoot on my days off and have been working a lot every other day. It seems as though summer has finally made itself permanent for a while, so that's great. The wildlife have been out and about quite a bit. We went for a drive last week to find a Black bear with a couple of cubs. We weren't the only people looking either, there were about five other cars that were just driving up and down the road for a few hours waiting for the bears to come out of the woods. After about two and a half hours we decided to direct out attention to the mountains for a little bit. I have been trying to really get my HDR workflow perfected, and trying to edit them to be ready for printing in the near future. I shot a few HDR panos of Edith Cavell from the road, and I think they came out really well. The one I've posted is four vertical shots, left to right. Each shot is also an HDR of three seperate frames bracketed at -2/0/+2 exposure. I once again used a pano stiching program to make the final pano, then just some minor curves layers to finish it all off.



So to top that day off we never did see the bear and cubs, but we did end up seeing a lone black bear. It could not have been more than two years old, he may look a little big in the photo, but I'm sure that's just because of the framing of the shot. I did get out for another shoot last week, but I'll post that in the coming days.....

On a non photo related note, a friend of mine has created a cool new Jasper website. It geared towards promoting local businesses, events, artists/musicians, etc. . You can also post things you want to sell or give away on there too. Check it out Here.

Photos: Nikon D90, 80-200mm f/2.8 (pano), 55-200mm (bear)